The Texas House has been a place where good justice reform proposals have gone to die. This year can and should be different, considering the momentum behind bills that would shore up eyewitness identification procedures.

As the clock ticks down on the legislative session, improving Texas criminal justice should get special attention. Unsettling revelations about faults in the system demand it.

Eyewitness ID should be the top priority. Misidentification of suspects has been exposed as the leading cause of erroneous convictions. Texas has an embarrassing record, including the longest list among the states for DNA-proven miscarriages of justice.

A bill by Sen. Rodney Ellis (SB 121) to create a model policy and require written ID standards for police agencies cleared the Senate unanimously. A similar House bill by Reps. Pete Gallego and Will Hartnett (HB 215) cleared committee unanimously. The House Calendars Committee will soon send one to the House floor for what ought to be final passage.

Calendars should give it priority status for the full chamber. It must not die in a legislative traffic jam, as a similar bill did two years ago.

Most Texas police agencies don’t have written ID policies and remain potential black holes for sound prosecution. Misidentification not only puts the wrong guys in jail, it lets the guilty roam free. This must stop.

A rundown of other important measures:

SB 122 would give a convicted person new, qualified access to DNA untested at the time of trial or not tested by modern techniques. This would avoid a repeat of the irrational turn of events last year involving death row inmate Hank Skinner, who was an hour away from execution on a triple murder before courts stepped in. DNA in police custody hadn’t been tested.

SB 123 and HB 219 would require police to make audio or video recordings of suspect interrogation, when feasible, in serious crimes. Fuzzy accounts of police questioning shouldn’t be the foundation for conviction. A recording could clear up doubt.

HB 220 opens the door to appeals if updated forensic techniques could bring new information by testing evidence. This might have cleared up questions lingering about forensic work before Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 in an alleged triple arson-murder.

SB 1835 would create a commission authorized to examine individual faulty convictions and recommend changes in law to close faults exposed in the system. A no-brainer.

SB 1688 and SJR 44 would empower the governor to call more than one 30-day reprieve for an execution, a last-ditch measure that could allow for critical new evidence to be examined.

Other important capital punishment bills would prohibit joint capital trials for two or more defendants (HB 2511) and rule out testimony from an informant who made a side deal with prosecutors for immunity (HB 689).

Finally, given so much need for reform, lawmakers should pass a death penalty moratorium, a step that has been endorsed in the past by Republicans as well as Democrats. That would allow for a commission to study the death penalty and the many legitimate questions about its dangers and fairness.

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